I have issues. The people that know and love me, love me in spite of them. I am having an issue and I don't know how to deal with it.
We threw a baby shower lunch thing for a co-worker of mine today. She's a nice enough lady, having her third child, a girl. She wasn't looking to get pregnant. Things happen though, and she's happy about it. I'm happy for her, mostly.
She's having a girl and I find myself feeling bitter and jealous, bittous.
Oscar was supposed to be a girl. Throughout my entire pregnancy, I swore that all I wanted was a healthy baby, that I didn't care if it was a boy or girl, just healthy. To a degree, that was true. But something in me came alive during the ultrasound when the perinatologist told me we were having a girl. I want a daughter. I have always wanted a daughter. I love my sons more than I love life itself, but I feel incomplete. When Oscar was born and they told me he was a boy, and not the daughter I had planned for, I wanted to cry. I don't know if I can explain this very well. It makes perfect sense in my head, but, like a lot of things in my head, may not translate well into intelligble language. I felt as if I'd gained and lost someone at the same time. From the moment the dr. told me it was a girl, she had a name. I said her name outloud and she became real. She became my daughter, a real, living, thriving human being. I spoke to her. I sang to her. I made plans for her. I knew her. I didn't know him. I felt as if I'd lost her, almost as if she'd died. And I felt like I had been handed a baby I didn't know. There was an instant disconnect-not from my son, but from the situation. I have bonded with my son, but I still have not been able to take apart the nursery we prepared for her so that we can make it boy-friendly.
I find myself feeling bittous toward complete strangers who happen to wander by me with their baby girls. I just had a baby. I should be happy. Everything went really well, and he is the picture of health. He is a great baby and relatively easy. I don't resent him, or blame him for having a penis. But I want her. I want them both.
This whole thing is stupid. I need to get over it and just accept that I don't have a daughter and that I may never have her. But I haven't been able to. My brain just won't let it go.
For the longest time I felt like the worst mother in the world because I was sad. I couldn't just be happy that I had a healthy baby boy. My joy and happiness in his arrival and existence was, and is, tempered by the sadness of not having her. I think that makes me crazy. I don't want my son to grow up thinking that I didn't want him or that he wasn't enough for me. I do want him. He is enough for me in that he is my son, and I love him for who he is and will love him for whatever he becomes.
But there is that empty place inside me waiting for her. I don't know what I'll do with it if she never comes.
JD Vance thinks bullet proof glass will abortion proof our vaginas
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Margaret, that little Vance kid just doesn’t get it. When asked about
abortion rights he said, “I want us to make it easier for moms to afford to
have babi...
10 months ago
2 comments:
Darling, As I was being wheeled into the operating room for The Baby, Dr asked me what I wanted because, "you won't be conscious until tomorrow, you know." I said, "A girl, we have a boy and I don't think I can do this again." The Baby was a boy. Much as I love him and would never, never replace him, I still wish there had been a girl, somewhere.
Well, that makes me feel a little better. At least I'm not totally crazy in feeling this way. I still feel a smidge (or more) of guilt that I feel this way at all. But it helps to know that I'm not the only one to ever feel it.
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